Blog Backlog Catch-up: February 2018 Brief Visits with Friends

After being away for 7 1/2 weeks, what could I possibly accomplish with just nine days at home? With a tour report and thousands of photos to tend to, plus other stuff that piles up, one must make priorities: visits with friends!

Dinner at Jake and Corey’s was high on the list (here are Caspar, Andrew, and Jake).

And then my friend Deb invited me and a bunch of others to help celebrate her dad’s 80^th birthday in Portland. So on my shortest visit ever to my home state, we prepared quite the feast and hoisted a glass to the admirable Ray Verzasconi.

Blog Backlog Catch-up: Northern Peru in Jan-Feb 2018

I didn’t fly home after my month at Cristalino but rather went directly to Lima to meet the group for my WINGS tour the northern Peru states of San Martín and Amazonas. This was my eighth time to this area and my four time leading this particular itinerary, which visits the dry forests south of Tarapoto and then reverses to move west into the cloud forests of the easternmost ridges of the Andes in the upper Mayo River drainage. The Owlet Lodge is the most famous lodge here.

We did see some of the most iconic birds of the region, including the Long-whiskered Owlet and the Marvelous Spatuletail. But far more photogenic than either of those is the ridiculously adorable Johnson's Tody-Flycatcher.

The Owlet Lodge’s illuminated exterior walls are a never-ending parade of moths, beetles, and other invertebrates, and I hope to someday put names to the hundreds of things I’ve photographed. I prioritize some, such as the geometrid genus Opisthoxia. This was my first Opisthoxia orion.

Sticking to lepidoptera, I was beyond excitement to find this Styx infernalis in the open area at the bottom of the Owlet Trail below the lodge. It’s a rarely seen butterfly, the only relative of the Costa Rican Metalmark, Corrachia leucoplaga, which I’ve blogged about.

Even on a birding tour we’ll stop for special mammals. This is the critically endangered Yellow-tailed Woolly Monkey, Oreonax flavicauda. We got to watch a troop the canopy foraging on leaves and fruits.

Finally, I had to mention this exciting Passiflora tarapotina, which I spotted high in the vine tangles not far from our lodge close to Tarapoto. It’s listed as threatened and, while known well in “captivity,” is rarely seen in the wild. I have to give thanks to my Passiflora specialist acquaintances on Flickr for immediately recognizing this flower.

Blog Backlog Catch-up: January 2018

I began the year at one of my favorite places in the world, Cristalino Jungle Lodge. I arrived there at the end of December as a guide for some of the lodge’s clients but then after a couple weeks moved over to become a field assistant for Susanne Sourell on her Cristalino Fungi Project. Assisting her on a more substantial level was Julia Simon, a Brazilian student with a particular interest in the genus Hygrocybe. Through Julia, Susanne was able to obtain all the necessary permits to collect mushrooms for university herbaria in Brazil. Future lab studies on their genetics will now be possible, which is exciting. There are probably many undescribed species here.

It was so hard to choose just a few of among the 2167 photos I ended up saving from the four weeks I spent there. I must have deleted at least four times that many.

I’d say the best snake was this Bothrops taeniatus, Speckled Forest Pit-viper. Yes, it is venomous, but it’s not aggressive.

The most exciting plant that I spotted from the boat was this Gnetum leyboldii. It is a relict gymnosperm in the obscure division Gnetophyta. Until now, the only gnetophytes I had ever seen in the wild were shrubs in the genus Ephedra, commonly called Mormon Tea. Five years ago in Lombok I actually saw fruits for sale in a market that were from a tree in the genus Gnetum. There are only nine species of Gnetum in the New World tropics, all vines, and I impressed myself that I recognized this for what it was.

  

We saw hundreds of mushrooms, but we were always casting an eye to ground to look for red and green members of the genus Hygrocybe. This one looks close to Hygrocybe neofirma, but it may be a new species. We ended up calling it the “WTF mushroom,” because of Julia’s reaction to when she saw it. She has handled many hygrocybes around Brazil, and for the first time ever she saw that this one stained her fingers red. She had this amazing look of wonder, surprise, happiness, and disbelief when she uttered “WTF?” in perfect English.

Birdernaturalist Returns!

I regret that I haven’t been keeping up on my blog, and I apologize.

The most ardent of my readers was my friend Jerry Simons, who died unexpectedly in March, 2018. He gave me the most consistent feedback on my posts, often with questions or suggestions for edits. Several months after his death I realized I had ceased blogging and eventually came to the realization that I had been writing primarily with him as my audience in mind.

Well, 2019 is already half over, in the past 16 months I’ve had so many great experiences that my urge to share has welled up again.

I’ve wanted to do a 2018 recap before starting up with more recent travels, and the longer I let it go, the more daunting that seems. But 2018 was a great year.

I had 18 separate tours or guiding obligations, a record for me (eight to ten tours would be a more reasonable number as a full-time job). I calculated that I spent just over 25% of the year in my Tucson home (in twelve different bouts, which averages less than 8 days between trips). Fifty-one days of the year were spent in planes or airports (though two of those were just 30-minute internal flights in a Cessna). I was in 14 countries.

Besides all the guiding I did, as you can tell from my last blog, I thoroughly enjoyed a non-birding bicycling trip through Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and France with my Tucson friend Andrew. So I won’t be posting any photos from that trip.

So here it goes, with just a few photos from each trip.

Benedeluxfra Biking Trip: Day 2

Here is the second of two posts I tried to send from my mobile phone that Blogger didn't like. I then gave up longer posts and made only a couple single-photo posts.

15 June, 2018

Andrew and I were tourists today, covering less than 40 miles. In Sint-Truiden we visited a well-preserved church founded by women in the 15th century. Then in Hasselt we went to the genever museum (genever is the original gin, though it no longer requires juniper berries, and is usually lower in alcohol content). We then tried a more scenic route along a canal, but it was fraught with detours and unmarked construction projects, so we ended up going along the N2 into Maastricht. There we visited a book store in an ancient cathedral.

Beneduluxfra Biking Trip: Day 1

Here is the first of two posts I tried to send from my mobile phone that Blogger didn't like.

14 June, 2018

I’m on vacation! I’m trying something very different—biking every day for eight + days with my friend Andrew Broan, who has been enjoying this sort of travel for decades.

Yesterday’s route was just under 50 miles through lovely countryside and charming Belgian villages.

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We ended with a superb dinner and a night in a nice hotel in a 608-year-old building.

I am noting birds mostly by ear, but I’m going to have to review my Sylvia warbler songs. Eurasian Curlews in a field were a highlight, as the songs of Blackbirds everywhere. But this isn’t a birding trip, hence the big departure from my usual travel.
Handsome and huge Woodpigeons are everywhere, even competing with feral Rock Doves for dropped fries.

 Another photo that might need explanation is this wood bee home installation that doubles as art.

Benedeluxfra Biking Trip Comes to an End

My ninth a final day of biking with my friend Andrew last Thursday was a big one, in fact my longest bike ride ever: 82 miles from Soissons to the 13th arrondissement of Paris. There were busy highways, quiet back country roads, and a very nice bike path along a canal the last few miles that took us directly into the heart of Paris, "the city of light and poodleshit" as Andrew calls his temporary home some 30 years ago. But there was also some nice habitat along the way with lots of birds (such as Greater Whitethroats). In one such area I took a photo of what looked a lot like an elderberry, but wasn't really woody and shrub-like. It turns out to be Dwarf Elder, Sambucus ebulus, the last of the photos above.

Some French Bugs

Biking from Florenville, Belgium to the village of Thugny-Trugny, I paused twice to get some bug photos. iNaturalist identified them as Aglais urticae, Small Tortoiseshell and Rutpela maculata, Spotted Longhorn.

Biking in Benedeluxfra

Blogger isn't allowing me to make posts with several photos, so I'll try just one from my ongoing 9-day biking (non-birding!) trip through Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and France. More later, I hope! The photo is of the massive cathedral complex in Aachen, Germany.

California Gulch Birding

I was home just 4 full days after Gambell and was lucky to coincide with my friend Marc Passmann, who had been traveling with friends and family in the state for the previous week.

I suggested we look for birds in California Gulch, camping one night to see the Buff-collared Nightjars. We had resounding success, even watching one sing at close range in my flashlight's beam.

We also saw Western Screech-Owl and a pair of this tiny yet ferocious looking Elf Owl.

WINGS Tour to Gambell, Alaska: Chef For a Week

Before I get too much farther behind, I thought I'd post something from my phone. From May 28-June 4, I was the cook for the WINGS tour to Gambell for the 10th year. It went really well. Above is the Tartine's Country Bread I made from starter I brought with me from Tucson.